The boundaries of desire and intimacy in post-apartheid South African queer film: Oliver Hermanus’s Skoonheid > Grant Andrews Research Fellow, English Department, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa Lecturer, School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa [email protected] ABSTRACT South African cinema is still dominated, both in terms of number and commercial success, by films featuring white Afrikaans-speaking characters. These films are mostly politically voiceless, ignoring the contentious racial and economic dynamics in the country, and they fail to represent queer realities. Skoonheid [Beauty] (2011), the powerful South African film directed by Oliver Hermanus, challenges this trend and offers a portrayal of sexualities and racial hostilities which are often silenced or ignored in mainstream cinema. The film depicts a white Afrikaans- speaking man named François, who becomes obsessed with his friend’s son, Christian. François has secret sex with a group of other white Afrikaans-speaking men on a farm near Bloemfontein. The group has strict rules that “moffies” (queers) and “kleurlinge” (“coloureds” or people of colour) are not welcome to join their sexual gatherings. These regulations and the secrecy that enshrouds same-sex attraction in the film belie François’s longing for intimacy, a longing which develops into an obsession with Christian that ends violently. In this paper, I locate the film within the broader trends of Afrikaans cinema and queer cinema in the country. I then perform a reading of the film to show how it offers an important voice to repressed sexualities, and exposes some of the hostilities which underlie relations in post-apartheid South African society. I focus on how intimacy, both cultural and personal, is impossible for François, and the film reflects how these intimacies are threatened by hostilities and marginalisation within South African society. Keywords: Skoonheid, Oliver Hermanus, South African film, sexuality, queer film, masculinity. Number 31, 2018 ISSN 2617-3255 | 30 South African queer film and post-apartheid social divides South African queer1 realities have been greatly underrepresented in local cinema. Even though roughly between fourteen and twenty-five feature-length films are produced in the country annually, in addition to many films produced for television and DVD release (Burnett 2014:14), only a handful of films from major studios have centrally dealt with queer themes in South Africa. These few representations include Proteus (2004) by John Greyson and Jack Lewis, The World Unseen (2007) directed by Shamim Sarif, Skoonheid [Beauty] (2011) directed by Oliver Hermanus, While You Weren’t Looking (2015) directed by Catherine Stewart, and Inxeba (The Wound) (2017) directed by John Trengove. Martin Botha (2012:248), in his review of queer cinema throughout South African history up until 2010, explains that ‘images of gay men and women are limited and still on the margin of the film industry. One ends up with less than 20 short films, a few documentaries and less than 10 features with openly gay and lesbian characters’.2 Skoonheid, the first Afrikaans film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival, received the Queer Palm in 2011 for its contribution to queer cinema (Sonnekus 2013:27). Unfortunately, this has not translated into a great deal of scholarly attention, and the rich themes, dynamic characterisation and important work of representation which queer films undertake have not been met with as much academic scrutiny as they deserve. South African queer films have a complex relationship with other cinemas in the country, simultaneously fitting within the post-apartheid milieu and challenging dominant narrative conventions. These queer films seem to fall under the imperative of a great deal of South African creative works to represent the realities of continued marginalisation, racial segregation and the highly contentious gender and identity politics which plague the country even after the formal end of apartheid (Burnett 2014:29). As Ashraf Jamal (2005:4) puts it, ‘cultural expression continues to be stalked by the apartheid imagination’. While a large amount of escapist romance films and comedies are produced in the country, particularly for the sizable white Afrikaans-speaking market,3 many films catering to broader audiences or falling outside of the comedy or romance genres tend to touch on socio-political issues linked to the legacy of apartheid (Burnett 2014:29). These films include the 2004 Oscar-nominated drama Yesterday by Darrell Roodt and Oscar-winning drama Tsotsi (2005) by Gavin Hood. It is significant that the white Afrikaans-speaking4 market is so dominant as well as being so frequently devoid of significant political themes. This indicates both the economic advantages afforded by the legacy of apartheid that allows for the group Number 31, 2018 ISSN 2617-3255 | 31 to disproportionately produce and consume film media, and also indicates the ways in which many Afrikaans-speaking people refuse to confront the political realities of a country still reeling from the horrors of the past. Chris Broodryk (2016:1), in his detailed study of Afrikaans cinema, explains that ‘Afrikaans cinema between 1994 and 2014 [is] a cinema of political impotence, a cinema devoid of a political voice’. As Broodryk (2016:7) notes, Afrikaans cinema is distinct from other post-conflict cinemas worldwide as it does not demonstrate political engagement or interrogation, and is largely homogenous. South African films marketed to white Afrikaans audiences hardly ever offer historical accounts that authentically address the role of Afrikaans people in the system of apartheid, or which give nuanced, multifocal perspectives on history or the post-apartheid landscape.5 By contrast, the South African queer-themed films mentioned above all directly and critically deal with issues of race and othering within South Africa, both historically, as in the case of Proteus where a white and black man are executed on Robben Island because of their physical relationship,6 and contemporarily as with Skoonheid, While You Weren’t Looking and Inxeba (The Wound). Skoonheid, as an Afrikaans film starring a mostly white, Afrikaans-speaking cast, serves as doubly challenging in the post- apartheid cinematic landscape, not only representing repressed queer sexuality, but also breaking with the mainstream of Afrikaans cinema by focusing on socio-political issues of racism, sexual violence and stifling gender norms. The film, through its study of obsession, repression and the longing for intimacy through the perspective of a conservative, patriarchal, white Afrikaans-speaking man, exposes many underlying dynamics of gender, race and sexuality in post-apartheid South Africa. The film offers a powerful lens on how repression, and identities framed within strict boundaries of desire, conduct and gendered social interactions, are linked to instances of discrimination and violence. Importantly, it seems to problematise the versions of Afrikaner masculinity which are espoused in most contemporary Afrikaans- language films (Broodryk 2016:13). This paper discusses Hermanus’s film with reference to its representation of the repressed desire for intimacy, expressed as obsession and eventually violence, and how this theme can be read as speaking to the lingering racial divisions and the othering of non-heteronormative self-expression in post- apartheid South Africa. The fact that queer realities are underrepresented in media can be seen as symptomatic of this repression within broader South African society, and the film offers a form of counter-narrative, asserting the existence of repressed queer identities in heteronormative, patriarchal spaces. Number 31, 2018 ISSN 2617-3255 | 32 As Saint-Francis Tohlang (2012:1) holds, queer filmmakers particularly have agency ‘in shaping, creating, imagining, acting and documenting their own history in a socio- political context where their histories have been marginalized and silenced for decades’.7 Richard Dyer (1993:15) explains that, within the gay rights movement, the media was often seen as ‘a carrier, reinforcer and shaper of […the] oppression [of queer people]’. Thus, by offering representations that complicate and expand understandings of queer realities within South Africa, these filmmakers play a part in reshaping media and informing understandings of socio-political dynamics within the country. Queer cinematic cultures in South Africa were instrumental in reshaping the gay rights movement, especially after apartheid, and Ricardo Peach (2005:xi) elaborates on how the Out in Africa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, an annual festival launched in the year of the country’s first democratic elections in 1994, was instrumental in fostering a public sphere for queer representation which was vital for legal change. Patricia Pisters (2010:208) reinforces the importance of using cinema as a lens into understanding social dynamics, arguing in her analysis of postcolonial cinema that it functions not merely as a representation of a society, but instead ‘operates as a performative speech act that plays a part in constructing reality’. In this vein, queer cinema particularly is instrumental for social change in various ways, such as fostering visibility, combatting discrimination, leading to greater human rights, presenting diverse and balanced representations, and leading to queer people gaining more autonomy in how they are represented